I LISTENED to Independent Democrats leader Patricia de Lille on SAfm the other day talking about four political parties forming a coalition.
I LISTENED to Independent Democrats leader Patricia de Lille on SAfm the other day talking about four political parties forming a coalition.
She came from the PAC but she talked about the release from prison of Nelson Mandela about twice, reinforcing the tendentious and stereotypical attitude pervasive in our national discourse that portrays Mandela as the only person who fought for liberation and whose release from prison must be the only one to be celebrated.
Yet there were people like Japhta Masemola, who was the longest serving political prisoner on Robben Island in modern history, nine of those years Masemola served in solitary confinement and is the embodiment and symbol of suffering and the person whose release should be celebrated more than any other former Robben Islander.
Moreover, Mandela lived too comfortably with a phone and and a fax in a house of a former head of Victor Verster Prison to make his release more significant than that of other prisoners who were locked up big time like Masemola.
De Lille missed a golden opportunity to teach listeners of SAfm about other significant PAC leaders who were locked up in that notorious prison.
Leaving the PAC and crossing the floor with the PAC parliamentary seat should not make her distort history. She also claimed that she left the PAC for many reasons. If that were the case, why didn't she resign and vacate the PAC parliamentary seat? I don't buy her story. What animated her to leave the PAC was opportunism and egotism.
I don't think the PAC will be part of that good-for-nothing coalition, some of whose members betrayed it.
Sam Ditshego, Kagiso
De Lille failed to tell listeners the truth about PAC
I LISTENED to Independent Democrats leader Patricia de Lille on SAfm the other day talking about four political parties forming a coalition.
I LISTENED to Independent Democrats leader Patricia de Lille on SAfm the other day talking about four political parties forming a coalition.
She came from the PAC but she talked about the release from prison of Nelson Mandela about twice, reinforcing the tendentious and stereotypical attitude pervasive in our national discourse that portrays Mandela as the only person who fought for liberation and whose release from prison must be the only one to be celebrated.
Yet there were people like Japhta Masemola, who was the longest serving political prisoner on Robben Island in modern history, nine of those years Masemola served in solitary confinement and is the embodiment and symbol of suffering and the person whose release should be celebrated more than any other former Robben Islander.
Moreover, Mandela lived too comfortably with a phone and and a fax in a house of a former head of Victor Verster Prison to make his release more significant than that of other prisoners who were locked up big time like Masemola.
De Lille missed a golden opportunity to teach listeners of SAfm about other significant PAC leaders who were locked up in that notorious prison.
Leaving the PAC and crossing the floor with the PAC parliamentary seat should not make her distort history. She also claimed that she left the PAC for many reasons. If that were the case, why didn't she resign and vacate the PAC parliamentary seat? I don't buy her story. What animated her to leave the PAC was opportunism and egotism.
I don't think the PAC will be part of that good-for-nothing coalition, some of whose members betrayed it.
Sam Ditshego, Kagiso
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